It was his birthday night. He’d had too much to drink. One glass at his age was too much. His stomach growled. The pissed-on perch was drowning in champagne. Walking seemed to ease the wind which pressed against his chest. He belched to let the champagne free. He knew that in his office desk there were sachets of kaolin to still his gut. He found them, and he found the portfolio of drawings, too, the artist’s working notes for the sculpture that his contemporaries seemed keen to force on him. He carried the portfolio to the water fountain in the lobby outside his office suite. He tipped the dry and powdered kaolin into his mouth like a child with sherbert and washed it down with water from the fountain. The coldness of the water dislodged the pains inside his chest. He belched again. He felt quite well at last. Not sick, at least. Not faint.
Victor put down the sheaf of drawings and looked at each. Romantic, formal pieces sketched in chestnut pastels. A market vendor weighing out his fruit. A girl with grapes and flowers. A porter with three produce trays on his head. And then – alarmingly – a drawing of his past: a beggar woman with a suckling child, her hand outstretched, the gift of apple balanced on her palm. He sat, he almost fell, into an aged wooden chair pushed in shadow up against the lobby wall. He looked and looked at what he took to be a drawing of his mother and himself … what, almost eighty years before? His head was flooded now, his face was drained. This was the statue that he’d have. He’d make his mother once again. He’d put her back. He knew exactly where she should sit and beg in bronze, between the Soap Market and the garden. At last, the implications of his sweeping hand that afternoon upon the roof became more clear. He’d start afresh, just as his accountants had advised. He’d build a market worthy of the statue. A market like a cathedral, grand and memorable. A market worthy of a millionaire. He would outlive himself in stone. His mother would outlive herself in bronze. It made good business sense, though no doubt Rook would not approve. He’d fight for Paradise.
What better time to start than then and there? Decide. Remove all obstacles. Proceed. Victor took his memo pad and wrote a note in pencil on it. For Anna. She could deal with Rook. A less generous man would call the police, and let them sort it out. But, no, let Anna do the job. That’s what he paid her for.
Victor was glad – relieved – to have this task with which to fill his ninth decade and so engrossed by every touch and mark upon the artist’s page that he neither saw nor felt the plastic foliage pressing on his back.
Part Two
MILK AND HONEY
1
THERE’S BEEN no other birthday chairs in Victor’s life, other than the one that Rook had prepared for him when he was old, other than the one he’d sat upon yet failed to see. Victor was a townie almost through and through. He was not as soily or as leafy as he claimed. He’d fled the countryside when he was three weeks old, when this brusque, gymnastic century was also in its infancy. His dad had died. An epidemic of the sweats had seen him off before his son was born. His home village could barely cope with the sudden glut of widows, dotagers, and orphans, all shaken from their tree before their time, all seeking charity at once. A widower could work and earn his keep. But who would go without to feed and clothe the harness-maker’s wife, or her new baby, when it came? Her husband’s skills had died with him. He had left no land or crops for her to sell. The workshop cottage and its yard was only theirs by rent. The landlord’s agent let her stay until the child was born, and then – what choice had he? – he asked for payment for the weeks she’d missed. The money that she’d made from selling unworked leather, harness tools, her husband’s horse, was not enough to clear the months of debt, and live. The mother and her wrinkled kid were as cold and poor as worms.
At least Victor’s tiny gut was full. His mother’s breasts were independent of all the hardship in their lives. But she was weak from loss of blood and milk and lack of food. The best she had for meals was half a block of pigeon’s cheese and two jumps at the larder door.
What of the free food of the countryside? The mushrooms and the nuts? The stubble grain left over by the thresher and the harvesters? The berries and the birds? The honey and the fish? Life’s not like that, except in children’s books. The free food of the countryside is high and maggoty before it’s ripe; or else it’s faster than the human hand and can’t be caught. What’s free and good is taken by the bully dogs and birds. What’s left is sustenance for flies and mice.
So Victor’s mother had no choice but to pack a canvas bag – a bag her husband stitched for her before they wed – and set off with her baby to the town. She had a distant, younger sister there, a maid to some rich man. Her address was poste restante at the Postal Hall. Victor’s mother asked the landlord’s agent to write a note. It said, ‘Sister, my husband’s dead, and less than twenty-three years old. I have a child. His name is Victor. So we must come to you as you are all we have, and will be with you soon for love and help. Today is Monday and the 26th of June. God keep you well. Signed lovingly, your only Em.’ She begged a postage stamp and left the letter with the village clerk. There was a mail train every other day. The letter would soon be in the town. Her sister would prepare to take the widow and the orphan in, for sure, and find them food and work.
Em made a sling for Victor and strapped him to her chest with her shawl. She tied the canvas bag across her back. She threw some grains of maize – for Thanks and Fare-thee-well – on the doorstep of her house. She lit a candle. She ought to carry light from their old home into their new, wherever that might be. Light is luck. You take it with you when you move. She lifted it and put it down again. Once. Twice. The flame drew back. It ducked and shrank. The light would have to stay. She was not fool enough to think she’d keep the flame alive out in the wind and night.
‘We’ll leave it here for him,’ she told her son. ‘Your father always loved the mummery of candle flames.’ But Victor cried when he lost the sight of that low flame. It was his first and only toy. He wanted it. Em knelt and snubbed it then, with fingers moistened by her tongue. She let him grip the candle end, a nipple and a finger made of wax. It kept him quiet as they set off on their journey to the town, through valleys made patchy-blue that time of year by fields of manac beans. The sky and countryside were fabric from one cloth, and that the colour of the Caribbean Sea.
The baby Victor was content with little more than suck and blow. He was happy just to hold the candle end, to sleep or feed, made biddable by the rhythm of his mother’s steps, kept warm and coddled by the sling and by her breasts. A child of three weeks old is built to bend and bounce and sleep throughout. And just as well, because his mother’s hike to town took seven days and passed through storms and woods and fords which would frighten and dismay children of a greater age. Em feared wolves and chills and broken legs, but Victor filled his empty head with heartbeats from his mother’s chest. She washed his soiled and heavy swaddle cloths in streams and let the wet clothes dry and stiffen, draped across her back. By the time they reached the outposts of the civic world, the cemeteries, the rubbish dumps, the gypsy camps, the homes of bankers, the abattoirs, the outer boulevards of town, Victor had regained his birthweight. His mother, on the other hand, was paler, thinner, colder than a cavern eel.
They left the fields behind. They reached metalled roads, and rows of houses with lawns and carriage drives. They came through high woods and found a measured townscape spreading out in greys and reds and browns, with a shimmering mirage of smoke which made it seem as if the hills beyond were chimney products of the city mills and that the sky was spread with liquid slate. This was a different city from the one we know. Less egoistic, more malign.
Em carried Victor down the causeway of trees and grass which split the city’s outer boulevard in two, and conducted trams and countryside into the town. These were the days when foot and hoof and wheel were battling for the government of towns, and wheels – because the rich had motor cars – were winning every skirmish on the streets. For peace and quiet the walkers shared the causeway wit
h the trams.
She asked an old man for the Postal Hall. ‘It’s far, you’ll have to take a tram,’ he said, pointing to the tallest part of town. He showed her where the tram would stop and waited while she joined the queue. But, once he’d turned away to dodge a path between the vans and carriages which thronged the road, she set off once again by foot along the tramway into the city’s heart. She feared the other passengers. She feared the clanking trams with their winding, outside stairs, and their wind-blown upper platforms which shook and muttered like the devil’s haycart. She trembled in the street. Yet surely these were women just like her, beneath their feathers and their ribbons, beneath their hobble skirts. What had she expected? That city people got about on hands and knees, as country wisdom claimed? She looked her urban sisters in the face, but could not find an eye to match her own. They seemed like modest girls – or sinful ones – who could not lift their eyes, who did not have the energy to smile. Em walked and smiled and sought a welcome from everyone she passed. How could she know how strange she seemed, how disconcerting was her upturned face and mouth? She kissed her Victor on the head. She nuzzle-whispered in his ear the chorus of the nursery rhyme: ‘Townies, frownies, fancy gownies; noses up is; mouthies down is.’
The Postal Hall was not what she had thought. In her world halls were empty spaces defended against the weather and the night by bricks and tiles, and only full for meetings and for feasts. She’d thought the Postal Hall would be a covered clearing in the town. Her sister, unchanged from the young girl who’d emigrated there three years before, would be waiting at the door. Or else, Em thought, she’d simply give the number of the poste restante. Someone would press a bell or make a call to summon her sister from her work. If it was simple to find folk in country towns, then think how easy it would be in cities such as this where everything was done so quickly and so well. Instead she found a sandstone building with many flights of steps, and far too many doors. Her access was blocked by carts and trams. Opposing streams of people competed for the pavement and the road. Never had she witnessed so much speed, heard such urgency or encountered such confidence and hesitation all at once. Never had she seen so many horses: so at ease and so fulfilled, despite the brassy onslaught of the motor cars.
Em crossed with Victor in the wake of two fat men in uniforms. She chose the central entrance to the Postal Hall, and went inside, through giant columns and great bronzed doors. At once, she took her hat from off her hair and held it in her hand. She almost crossed herself and fell down on her knees to pray. Here was a bloated, oblong hall, sepulchral and forbidding. What light there was came through high windows in a dome and from gas chandeliers which hissed like nuns, and were reflected in the polished veiny marbles of the floor. There were a dozen mahogany counters and a score of metal grilles and at each one a jostling queue. All the men and women there had forms or money or parcels or letters in their hands and, even though they whispered as in church, the hubbub of the place was louder, deader than the street. No one seemed to see her there. Their arms banged into hers. She held the paper out with her sister’s number, but no one stopped to help. She called her sister’s name. Her raised voice upset Victor, who had mostly slept despite the city. He pushed his chin against his mother’s breasts, vexed by something. Wind, perhaps, or by the taste of desperation in his mother’s milk. She pushed him to the nipple once again, but he only bit it with his gums, and cried like old men cry, his face a contour map of lines, his eyes squeezed tight. Again she called her sister’s name. But no one came except a post commissionaire, who pointed to his badge and then the door and said that she should leave or ‘cut the noise’.
She joined a queue behind a line of people, most of whom had envelopes or cards. They moved away from her, her homelessness, her baby’s noise, the smell of urine drying on her clothes-line back.
‘Is this the place?’ she asked, and held her sister’s number up. They saw the two words, poste restante, and pointed to an anteroom. Inside were ranks of metal boxes, each with slits and locks, another counter and another queue. When her chance came, Em held her sister’s name and number up against the grille. The woman at the counter glanced at it and disappeared into a closed, back room without a word of greeting. She returned a moment later with a letter. It was the one which Em had sent – thanks to the borrowed literacy of the landlord’s agent – two weeks before. The clerk said, That’s all there is,’ and ‘Identification, if you please.’
Em was confused. She said, ‘My sister, is she here?’ She gave her sister’s name again. She held a conversation that made no sense and made the people in the queue short-tempered and amused. The counter clerk put her sister’s letter to one side. ‘I can’t help,’ she said. Already she was serving someone else.
Outside again, Em could not find a place to rest and contemplate. So this is my life now, she thought. I’m all the Bs – bitched, buggered, and bewildered – and far from home! At least young Victor was asleep again. His mother rolled the end of candle in her hand.
Em walked aimlessly while there was light. She hoped to see her sister on the street. On that first night they slept in stables near the railway yard, but in the morning dogs had sniffed them out and frightened Victor with their barks. Again she walked the streets and looked in all the faces passing by. If she saw women of her sister’s age who looked like maids, she stopped them, mentioning her sister’s name and asking them for help, advice, or work.
‘You’ll not get work with that,’ one woman said, pointing at the top of Victor’s nuzzling head. ‘What is it? Boy or girl? There’s people in this town who’d pay good money for a kid like that. I can find you someone who will give this kid a proper life.’ She held Em’s arm. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll take you to a place where you can eat and sleep.’ Em had to shout and struggle to get free.
That second night they slept as best they could on sheltered benches at the tramway terminus. The lights were harsh and there was noise from work-gangs cleaning trams. The yardman said she’d have to move, but when he saw the child he let her stay. ‘For just one night,’ he warned. ‘And then you’d better take the baby back to where your people are. A little dot like that won’t last five minutes sleeping rough.’ Em said she had a sister who would help. She told the man her sister’s name and what had happened at the Postal Hall. He shook his head. ‘You’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘Your sister’s just one tiny country bean, buried deep down in the sack. You won’t find her by sticking in your hand and pulling ten beans out. This city’s big. You’ve seen the crowds. Your sister, she’s as good as dead unless you’ve got the address of a house.’
Later, he came back. She woke to find him watching her. He had some cold fish and some bread.
‘You’re quite a pretty girl,’ he said, looking more at Victor and Em’s breasts than at her face. ‘You’d better find some man to take you in. You’d better find a proper father for the child.’
Em shook her head and said she didn’t want the bread or fish. She had no appetite. She feared the yardman wanted something in exchange for food. His eyes were flared and restless like a pig in heat. He looked – to use her mother’s phrase – as if his heart had slipped below his belt. She closed her eyes and pulled her shawl across her chest. At last she heard the yardman walk away. He had not left the bread or fish behind.
Now, her third day on the streets, she did her best to keep her problems to herself. She did not try to match the gazes of the men and women in her path. She did not seek – or trust – their kindness any more. She sat with Victor in the sun on the steps of the Postal Hall. She’d tried the clerks in poste restante. This time a man behind the grille had asked for proof of who she was before he’d check the number that she gave. He had looked at her and Victor as if they both were pigeons of disease. She could not stop the tears. She could not stop them running down her cheeks onto her shawl even when she’d fled the Postal Hall and rested in the sun. What should she do? Seek out the yardman? Sell Victor for the highest sum?
Head out of town and find her husband’s village once again, beyond the sea-blue fields? Perhaps she ought to step beneath a tram. Or try her luck beneath the hooves and wheels of some fast cart. She was too tough to take these easy routes. In those days life was hard. All life was hard. They raised you then on work, debt, hunger, cold. Three days and nights without a bed in town was better than the seven they had spent walking through the fields and woods. So things were looking up and would improve each day.
She nursed the dream of meeting with her sister once again, but set her daily target low. The first task was to find a place of safety. Then to find a place where they might sleep without fear of men or thieves. And, then, a little food perhaps. A good crisp apple, sweet with sun, was what she most desired. This was the country treat for little girls with tears or for children who’d been good. ‘Cheer up, dear Em,’ her mother used to say. ‘Go on. Go to the shed and get yourself a nice ripe apple from the tub.’ Em smiled at this – the memories of her mother and of treats. It must have been the smile and the charm and snugness of Victor at her breast that caused the two women passing by to pause and match her smile with theirs. They threw a few small coins into Em’s spread lap, and smiled again, and walked away. They looked like sisters, plump, modest girls, with shallow caps pinned to their hair and shoes with little heels. The baskets that they carried – the country market kind, woven out of teased bark – were empty. They looked like rich men’s maids, like country girls who’d made their lives in town. Em followed them. It seemed the wisest thing to do. They led her through narrowing streets, past mews, and squints and alleyways, beneath the medieval wooden gates, into the merriment of the Soap Market where they – and Em herself – were soon lost in the crowd. If her sister was a maid to some rich man, then surely she would buy her victuals there, thought Em. Besides, she felt at ease and safe amongst the country products and the smells. What could be more innocent than shopping in the marketplace for food? Ten, twenty times, she thought she saw the plump sisters once again. But all the women looked alike. They seemed to dress the same, and walk in pairs. These were the type of women, as Em had discovered, who would give coins freely for a widow with a child on milk. She knew that this was where her fortune would be made.